Twitter used phone numbers provided for security to target ads
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
On Tuesday, Twitter announced that it “unintentionally” used phone numbers and email addresses for advertising purposes even though the information was provided by users for two-factor authentication.
According to Twitter, no personal data was shared with the company’s third-party partners, and the “issue that allowed this to occur” has been addressed. As of September 17th, phone numbers and email addresses are now only collected for security purposes, Twitter said.
“We cannot say with certainty how many people were impacted by this,” Twitter said in a blog post disclosing the security mishap. “We’re very sorry this happened and are taking steps to make sure we don’t make a mistake like this again.”
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